TIM KEOWN Making a List -- The Week That Was: Darryl, Jose and Al

TIM KEOWN

Published
4:00 am PDT, Saturday, June 24, 1995

THIS WAS a great week for everybody who has a soft spot for those special people who make our frivolous athletic events worth following.

We had Darryl Strawberry taking control of his life one more time. He took the blame for everything, again, and seemed genuinely contrite and rehabilitated -- again. Amazingly, these soul-baring events always seems to coincide with Strawberry signing another big-money contract.

We also had Jose Canseco bombing miserably in Triple-A Pawtucket -- six at bats, five strikeouts -- then claiming those wacky Pawtucketians attacked his truck with bats and balls after he refused to sign autographs.

Somewhere, somehow, you know those professional golfers are still stalking Tonya Harding. The planets are aligned too perfectly to believe anything else.

THIS WEEK'S LISTS

-- After watching and listening to the public display of political backslapping over in Oakland, one question remains: Isn't Don Perata a former county supervisor?

-- When we think of baseball, the first thing that comes to mind is a smoky barroom and a woman in a beret: Those SportsChannel commercials for the A's, using the comedienne/ poet/whatever, just don't work.

-- Irrelevant headline of the week: "ABC, NBC Quit Baseball."

-- Great moments in Warrior draft history: Wesley Cox, Russell Cross.

-- Three things the Giants hate to see: 1) Burba pitching in a close or tied game; 2) Burba pitching two or three days in a row; 3) Burba behind in the count.

-- We were wondering what was happening with the Phillies, so we checked in with our favorite Philadelphia writer and found this, the week's worst journalistic moment: "With team leader Lenny Dykstra idled indefinitely with back woes, cleanup man Dave Hollins fighting the flu and a bullpen more frazzled than a downtown parking-meter cop, the Phillies suddenly appear to have less momentum than Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's foundering presidential campaign."

-- And later on in the same dispatch, we learn: "What happened was harder to swallow than liver marinated in boiling motor oil."

-- For some reason, the arrow kept bouncing three or four times and stopping out near second base: After a recent game in Toronto, Clark went outside after SkyDome emptied and took 30 minutes of target practice with his bow and arrow.

-- Darryl Strawberry, last July: "I don't blame anybody but myself. I take full responsibility."

-- Darryl Strawberry, on Thursday: "I take full responsibility for whatever has happened to me. . . . I don't fault anybody but myself. But I feel that I can change this around."